Punisher: Eye of the Beholder
by Eons I slept
Summary: Frank Castle hunts a serial killer more formidable than any foe he's ever faced.
1. Prologue

Prologue

Afghanistan.  
Some time ago.

He found it down there, in the dark; it had been waiting for him.

The concept of time had become abstract, something tenuous and strange. In his worst moments, a great dread would reach up from his belly and clutch at his throat with bony fingers made of ice, threatening to suffocate him. In his worst moments, he feared that time had abandoned this place, that where once it had been tethered to his existence with invisible chains now it was free to do as it pleased. It was pleased to leave him to his hole.

In his worst moments, he feared that he had gone insane.

Abandoned by time, the hole-thing prodded its swollen belly with imagined fingers, pondering when it had last eaten. A vague recollection of blood and sinew stained its mind's eye, a lancing pain shooting through its guts. The hole-thing knew that it was dying, that its body was being pushed against the grating of its threshold, pushed _through_ it like meat through a grinder. The real question, however, was if it _could_ die. It was no longer certain.

Without time, could anything truly perish? Without light, would it even recognize the arrival of darkness? In its best moments, the hole-thing imagined that death would give way to light, that dying would reunite it with time. A joyous outcome. Far too joyous to come to fruition. No, death would be denied the hole-thing, for that was the nature of its existence. It lived in the hole, and that was all.

In its worst moments, the hole-thing believed that this was just a precursor to being born. That its entire life had been a fabrication, a construct.

The hole-thing felt a giggle bubble up from its throat and quickly slapped a grimy hand over cracked lips hard enough to draw blood. The very idea of a voice in this place terrified it beyond comprehension. The idea that it was a person.

Crawling towards the corner of darkness where it drank, the hole-thing recognized the cold, rough earth that raked against its skin. It recognized the idea of those things. Of earth and skin.

It was the idea of itself that had become suspect.

As it pressed its splintered lips to the hard-packed dirt and sucked, the hole-thing wondered at the water that tickled its swollen tongue and assaulted its constricted throat like tiny razor blades. Pain had become its only reassurance that it wasn't dead, that it possessed some semblance of form. Pain, and the suffocating smell of shit.

From somewhere in the darkness, from nowhere, the hole-thing heard the stranger speak for the first time.

"It's not enough to drink, you know."

The voice was like a gunshot, louder even, so loud and intrusive that the hole-thing slapped its palms to either side of its skull, the result a far louder explosion accompanied by shrieking pain.

"You must eat to live. You must escape." A rich voice, thunderous, commanding. It was the only voice the hole-thing could ever remember hearing, the first and last, the greatest. Somehow it knew the voice predated even the hole, that the voice had known all, seen all, had been there from the beginning, had been with it here all along.

Scrabbling along the earthen floor the hole-thing felt as though a tremendous weight were pressed against its back, gaining traction near impossible, slipping in the mire of its own excrement.

"Time is here, it has not abandoned you. But it is running out, and quickly. You must act if you wish to live, you must fight. You must _KILL."_

A tremendous calm washed over it with that final word, the echo reverberating through its mind, its entire body. Its soul.

"Ah...now you remember, yes? Wet, sticky copper. Hot breath against your palm, a muffled scream. A final word, denied. The rifle...I know you remember the rifle. I know your hands remember."

He looked at the black void where his hands should be. Where he knew they were. He looked hard into the black...and he thought he could see them there, looking back at him. There was longing in that gaze...and a reverence.

"Time has found you again, my old friend, and there is work yet to be done. Now start digging."

He found it down there, in the dark; an understanding.

He began to dig.


	2. I

The Hell We Make Ourselves

Chinatown, NYC.  
Present day.

The sentry was tired, too tired to notice the long shadow stepping up to accompany his own. For centuries the small stretch of time dividing night and day had been the preferred hour for humans to kill other humans. Most were as deep asleep as they were like to get, those that were awake exhausted and complacent. In ancient culture the reasons had been less pragmatic; the rising sun spilling over the horizon like a tidal wave of blood, thought to bless red deeds.

The sentry's head dipped for the last time in his life as a strong, calloused hand clamped over his mouth, silencing his startled cry. A length of tempered steel plunged into his windpipe and twisted, silencing him forever. As Frank Castle watched the light leave the young man's eyes, the pragmatist in him knew it was safe to release his hand from the sentry's mouth. There was no part of him that felt blessed and no part of him that wanted it.

The alley service door led him past the restrooms and through the empty club floor. After quickly clearing the restrooms, Frank stepped cautiously into the club proper. The familiar stench of stale sweat, sex and bleach greeted him as he brought the .45 Kriss to bare. The large suppressor almost looked hungry as it swept the open area in front of him, searching darkened corners for life to snuff out.

He met another Triad on the stairs. The submachine gun coughed briefly and four rounds ripped the scum's face apart. Frank stepped to the side and let the body crash down to the landing. Anyone investigating the noise would be one less vermin he'd have to flush out later.

No one investigated. All the better.

Proceeding to the west end of the second floor, Frank came to the large double doors leading into a derelict ballet studio, now serving as a makeshift barracks to the thirty-two Triad triggermen occupying the club. Through the night Frank had watched the entrance and side entrance, the only two ways into the building from street level, meticulously accounting for everyone who came and went. The club had been shut down for the last two days because of the murders, and not even prostitutes had been allowed access. Only thirty-two Triad triggermen, most of that number sound asleep on cots and other makeshift beds.

Frank unslung the rucksack from his back. Quietly, he snaked the length of thick chain between the heavy door handles multiple times, wondering at what this building had been used for when first built that it would have such a large steel door in the first place. Regardless, the space between the thick steel handles was more than accommodating, and he managed four wraps of the chain before securing it with an equally thick padlock.

The door secured, Frank removed the principle item from the rucksack; a five gallon jug of gasoline. He had made sure to top it off so no sloshing would betray his position and because when burning out a nest of rats you didn't skimp on the fuel.

Starting at the end of the hallway, he made his way past the padlocked door, emptying more than half the jug before he'd passed. After making a short trail, he tossed the jug and its remaining contents to the base of the door where it bounced loudly, throwing gasoline across the floor, walls and ceiling. No need for quiet any longer. Daybreak had come, the low sitting sun casting a pale light through the lone window.

Frank Castle struck a match and made the dim hallway a whole lot brighter.

As the hallway burst into a wall of fire at his back, Frank unclasped the rebreather at his belt and firmly fixed the mask to his face before stalking towards the east end of the building, the Kriss leveled before him. Excited voices raised the alarm as the hallway became choked with smoke. Two men burst out of a door to his left, already coughing violently. One of the Triad swung a pistol about his face as if he could fan the smoke away. Frank shot him first, the Kriss sputtering softly and the Triad's skull flying apart like shattered porcelain. The other Triad barely reacted as he fell to his hands and knees, coughing violently. Frank raked a lengthy burst down the thug's spine as he continued past, quickly clearing the room before reloading.

A cacophony of screams filled the corridor in his wake, seeming to rise in tandem with the roaring flames.

The smoke was less severe as he rounded the corner of the hallway, towards the north end of the building. The hallway here was choked with men instead of smoke, a dozen Triad looking confused outside of open doors, all but naked, panicked yelling interrupted by fits of coughing. A small man in a wifebeater was at the far end of the hall, waving a nickle plated 9mm around his head and screaming at a Triad in front of him.

They all seemed to see him at once.

Weaving diagonally to put an unarmed Triad between himself and another raising an uzi, Frank dipped into a low crouch as a wild burst of prolonged gunfire tore open the unarmed thug's back. Catching the falling Triad on his left shoulder, Frank fired from under the dead man's armpit, the uzi-wielding Triad's face instantly relocated to the opposing wall.

Visibility had become limited to a few feet in the time it had taken for the two men to die and the remaining Triad, the nearest of them more than ten feet away, began firing blindly into the gloom, screaming between coughs. Frank sank to the floor using the corpse as a shield, firing controlled bursts at every muzzle flash. Those who didn't shoot each other were shot by him, and within a few moments all lay still.

He began working his way up the hallway, double-tapping bodies as he went, the only light coming from the few windows on the floor and the wall of fire consuming the building at his back. From somewhere to the west he heard a great crash and knew the stairwell had collapsed. The screams had stopped some time ago.

Arriving at the end of the hallway Frank came to the small man in the wifebeater, who had since collapsed from smoke inhalation, and the man he had been screaming at. Frank put two rounds in the subordinates skull and dropped the Kriss before removing his rebreather and fixing it to wifebeater's face.

Strapped to his back was a fireladder he'd modified with three industrial wall anchors. Removing the heavy firefighter jacket, Frank unstrapped the ladder and began slamming the anchors into place. As he screwed them into the wall the smoke bit viciously at his eyes, forcing him to close them and work blind as he finished with the second screw. He had been holding his breath since removing the mask, and the drum of his heart was rivaled only by the crackling snarl of the encroaching flames. As he finished with the final anchor he felt as though he'd been lowered into a boiling pot.

Throwing the ladder through the window, Frank felt around at his feet for the rebreather to make sure he had the right body before throwing the small man over his shoulder. As he opened his eyes and climbed out onto the ladder, greedily sucking in a breath of the morning air, the unmistakable stench of charred flesh assaulted him through the smoke filled window. Climbing shakily down the ladder, he couldn't help but see the window above as some sort of demonic portal, billowing smoke and flame. A hellscape of his own design.

All of the worst hells were man made.

Wifebeater began to stir, hacking inside the rebreather, squirming on Frank's shoulder. It hadn't been easy climbing down the ladder one-handed, the Triad's struggle only compounding the difficulty. Seeing that they were only ten feet off the pavement, Frank shrugged the small man off his shoulder, the scumbag's startled shriek only partially muffled by the mask.

Dropping down next to the Triad, who now clutched at his tailbone and screamed in agony, Frank looked down the length of the alley to the street, where a large crowd had formed around a police cordon. Sirens and the collective clamor of the mob dominated every other sound as a group of firefighters hefting a large hose ran past the mouth of the alley. A lone policeman followed but stopped short as he saw Frank standing over the Triad. He took a single step forward before Frank turned to face him and the cop saw the massive white skull painted on his chest.

All of the color left the cop's face, before he turned and walked away.


End file.
